Consuming Knowledge: Studying Knowledge Use in Leisure and Work Activities
Consuming Knowledge: Studying Knowledge Use in Leisure and Work Activities

Author: Steven D. Silver

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 146154615X

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It is difficult to overstate the importance of personal consumption both to individual consumers and to the economy. While consumer&, are recognized as valuing market goods and services for the activities they can construct from them in the frameworks of several disciplines, consequences of the characteristics of goods and services they use in these activities have not been well studied. In the discourse to follow, I will contrast knowledge-yielding and conventional goods and services as factors in the construction of activities that consumers engage in when they are not in the workplace. Consumers will be seen as deciding on non-work activities and the inputs to these activities according to their objectives, and the values and cumulated skills they hold. I will suggest that knowledge content in these activities can be efficient for consumer objectives and also have important externalities through its effect on productivity at work and economic growth. The exposition will seek to elaborate these points and contribute to multi disciplinal dialogue on consumption. It takes as its starting point the contention that consumption is simultaneously an economic and social psychological process and that integration of content can contribute to explanation.

Status Through Consumption
Status Through Consumption

Author: Steven D. Silver

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 1461509831

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Consumption takes place in settings or environments which have both direct and indirect effects on its dynamic path. Direct effects of environments on activities in consuming can occur through constraints that environments impose. Environment can also have indirect effects on consumption through enduring modification of internalized constructs which enter heuristics for decisions on activities. The importance of environments to consumption is increased by the definitional dependence of status on the judgements of others. This study examines microprocessing in consumer activities for status as it interacts with structure in the environments of these activities. The importance of environments in status activities provides the basis for a seperate, but related inquiry into observed differences in the form they take across societies. Conjecture on the consequences of differences in the structure of environments for consumption that typify a society is studied in the narrative statements by members of comparison societies and in the content of print advertising in these societies. Evolutionary processes which could establish observed differences in structure across societies are also considered in both their systematic and random components. I review models of random drift and stochastic resonance as candidate forms for generating observed structure in environments. Directions for the subsequent study of status through consumption are discussed.P Introduction: Status Through Consumption; Knowledge Use in Nonwork Activities for Status; Interactions of Consumer Microprocessing and Structured Environments: Activity Feedback and the Stability of Structure; Awards and Honors Systems in Structured Environments: Cross Societal Comparisons of Narrative Statements on Consuming for Status; Comparative Analyses of Consumption Appeals in the Print Advertising of the USA and France, 1955-1991 Random Process in the Generation of Structured Environments; Overview and directions for Study of Status Through Consumption.

Environmental Publics
Environmental Publics

Author: Sally Eden

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-12-08

Total Pages: 167

ISBN-13: 1317280474

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How do ordinary people think about the environment as they go about their daily lives? Does thinking about the environment make them do things differently? This book is the first to explore the idea of ‘environmental publics’, that is, the ways in which ordinary people engage with environmental issues across different practical contexts of work, play and home. Emphasising the practices of ‘environmental engagement’, Environmental Publics examines how people consume the environment, learn about it, campaign for its protection and enjoy it through their leisure time. But the book avoids relying on idealisations of ‘consumers’ or ‘citizens’, or theoretical constructs about behavioural norms that have traditionally dominated research in this field. Instead, this book differentiates environmental publics not by who they are but by what they are doing – their daily practices. It also analyses specifically the geographies of those practices – how what people do affects the environment but in different ways across time and space and at different scales – aspects of practices that are neglected in the literature. With an interdisciplinary perspective, this book will be of interest to students and scholars in geography, sociology, science and technology studies, political science and anthropology. It is written in an accessible and readable style, so as to be useful for preliminary and more advanced courses in environmental management, perception and policy, as well as in studies of modern society, consumption and environmentalism.

Serious Leisure
Serious Leisure

Author: Robert A. Stebbins

Publisher: Transaction Publishers

Published: 2011-12-31

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 1412809770

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Serious Leisure offers a comprehensive view and analysis of the current state of the sociology of leisure. Defining and differentiating the way people use their free time, Stebbins divides such activity into categories of serious, casual, and project-based leisure that he further separates into a variety of types and subtypes. Together they comprise what he calls "serious leisure." In this perspective, serious leisure constitutes systematic pursuit of an amateur, hobbyist, or volunteer activity sufficiently substantial and interesting in nature and requiring special skills, knowledge, and experience. Casual leisure, though immediately, intrinsically rewarding, is by contrast a relatively short-lived pleasurable activity, requiring little or no special training to enjoy it. Project-based leisure is a short-term, reasonably complicated, occasional creative undertaking carried out in free time. Stebbins sets out the basic concepts and propositions that make up the three forms, focusing on their essential elements. He takes stock of the serious leisure literature as well as that for casual and project-based leisure. Stebbins sees "serious leisure" realized by way of a set of foundational concepts--organization, community, history, lifestyle, and culture--and several of their component areas. He reviews the history and background of the concept of serious leisure and then adds historical commentary on, first, casual leisure and, then, project-based leisure. Finally, he examines the future and the importance of the serious leisure perspective in a globalizing world, and some of its critical links with other fields of knowledge and practice, notably the nonprofit sector and preventive medicine. Together with its original insights, Serious Leisure offers a single, handy, coherent, comprehensive resource. It will be of interest to sociologists, labor studies specialists, and economists.